This Life is a Beautiful War

Chapter 2

***There's going to be a 'sort of' warning for this chapter only because there's some description of abuse.***

Chapter 2

Gabby

I can remember a time when my mom actually loved me, when she actually laughed with me, played with me.  But now those memories are clouded over with worse ones. 

The first time it happened was a few months after the car accident.  She had gotten drunk pretty much every night after the accident and my father’s death.  At first she would just yell at me, say it was my fault for wanting to go bowling with my friends.  It wasn’t my fault that that stupid drunk driver swerved into our lane and hit us head on.  But that night she wasn’t just throwing words at me. 

She was throwing fists.

I can’t really remember it all that well.  That’s because she’d knocked me right in the face, causing me to fall back onto the hardwood floor and black out. 

When I’d woken up the next morning, I had blood splattered down my face and shirt from my nose and the bruises were already forming all over my body from where she hit and kicked me.  My mom had been passed out on the couch with an empty bottle of vodka beside her. 

Ever since then, anytime I said something that sounded wrong to her, every time I gave her some sort of ‘look’, I’d get hit, kicked, or backhanded across the face.  Yes, I should have told but I just couldn’t find it in me to tell someone who could help.  And if I did, I was scared about what was going to happen to me and my mom.  I didn’t want to find out.

Now that I was four months away from being eighteen, I was going to be out right when the clock stroked midnight on January third.  I didn’t know where I would be going but I knew it would be a better life for me. 

But as for now, I had to deal with her. 

Like this morning when I was making cereal for breakfast – cereal and milk that I bought with my own money – I got yelled at for stealing and punched in the ribs where she had the night before. 

I’d gone to the cemetery after to sit on the bridge that was not far away from where my dad was buried.  I didn’t want to sit beside him when I did what I did. 

I don’t know why I started cutting.  I think I started about a year after the accident.  I just needed something to take my mind off of the pain of my mother’s abuse. 

I kept the blade wrapped in tissue in a small antique matchbox.  I hated seeing it every time I cut but I knew that it would be able to take my pain away.  It was the only thing that could get my mind off of everything. 

I always felt sick after I did it and covered it with a band aid.  I hated that I couldn’t seem to be able to stop, even though I wanted to.  I had tried to stop so many times before but something always pushed me over the edge and I started again. 

Neither Jake nor Dylan knew I did this to myself.  I didn’t want them to know.  I wore clothes that covered every bit of skin that was marred by either the hand of my mother or me.  I tried to keep everything to myself but sometimes I just couldn’t do it. 

If my mom was having a really bad night, most of the time I would sneak away and go over to Jake’s house.  He always kept the window open just in case I needed to be with him.  I told him the first time I did it that I had nightmares.  That was partially true but my nightmares happened all the time, not just when I was sleeping.  I was always comforted by him as he let me cry into his shoulder until I fell asleep.  And before he would wake up in the morning, I’d be gone and back at my house.